I was doing a little research on Woot's forums and came across an interesting post that made this project a whole lot easier. Basically the post indicated that Woot had setup a XML document for use in creating trackers. Not only was the information as up to date as the Home page. There were additional elements in the XML document that are not represented on the home page, like percentage sold. This enabled me to add a progress bar that indicates what percentage of the item remains before it sells out. Way to go Woot!

Once I got the XML reader set up and running, it was simply a matter of grabbing the elements I needed from the XML document. This also boosted the download speed tremendously, allowing me to be able to refresh the data as quickly as every 5 seconds. Actually faster, but I think 5 seconds is fast enough to capture the data of a fast moving sale item. Of course the true test will come the next time a Woot Off is in progress and I can calibrate it when there is a significant amount of traffic pulling data from the site.

I've pretty much completed the first tab. Although I still am going to add a message bar across the top to give alerts of when there is a Woot off in progress and such. BTW, the screen shot is the April 1st woot, look closely at the price. $1 Million bucks. Good April Fools.

I've started working on the second tab which will contain the search parameters and different alarm settings. As you can see, I still have a way to go here. But the alarm is currently up and working, although it only sounds one type of tone. But I plan on expanding that area, so that users can have different sounds for different types of alerts. I've have also got the a slider in position to control the refresh rate. When a Woot off is not in progress this control is disabled and the default refresh rate is every 30 minutes. But when a Woot Off has been detected the slider will become enabled allowing the user the ability to adjust how often the data is refreshed.

I did not include a screen shot of the web browser, since that is already completed. See previous post for screen shot.

I have also started working on the overall look and feel, although I am still playing with ideas. I have decided to stick with colors used on the Woot web site for now.